Great Commission
by Caidreabh
Summary: Unable to sleep, Grissom recounts the path that he took to where he is now, and the reasons why he remains so dedicated to his job.
1. Attempt at Sleep

Lately I've been wondering a lot about Grissom's past, based on the few hints they've dropped on the show so far. I was also really intrigued by the Grissom/Greg interactions in some of the most recent episodes. So I got an idea that was too good to ignore. It delves into Grissom's past and deals with his religion, his time spent in LA, his opinions of Greg, and, best of all, Sara/Grissom UST.  
  
This is my first time writing a WIP. I actually wasn't planning on posting this until it was finished, but I realized that I need to go back and watch a few episodes again so I can make everything be continuous with the show, and I'm too impatient to wait that long.  
  
Normal disclaimer applies. I love these characters, but they're not mine.  
  
---  
  
She knew an hour before I did. We closed the case and filed the paperwork early this morning. The shift is over now, and I'm lying in bed staring at the wall. The light is coming through the window and is keeping me awake. I've been on the night shift now for several years, and I never have gotten used to it. The light, coupled with everything going through my mind right now, is making it hard to sleep. I just can't forget that Greg told Sara, and she didn't come and find me. It wasn't until an hour later that I finished the work I was doing and went to ask Greg for the results myself. \ Why didn't she tell me? Was she trying to prove herself to me? God knows she doesn't have to. In my eyes, she's perfect. She's smarter than anyone else I know. She works twice as hard as anyone I know. She always has this strong gut instinct about every case we work. She's beautiful. She is the most beautiful, dedicated, intelligent person I know. I wonder about what she's doing at this very moment. She's not asleep. She's got the police scanner on, and she's listening to it. She's curled up in a chair with the latest book she's reading—something on forensics or biology. Or a mystery novel. She secretly reads them. I saw one in her car once, last year.  
  
Greg had stood there, looking somewhat confused, when she walked down the hall with the printout in her hands. She looked genuinely sorry, but, truthfully, her look is partially what makes me so confused about the whole situation. Greg's look, though—that didn't confuse me at all. That made me want to reprimand him for something, though he didn't do anything wrong. If I had the guts to pull rank, I would have said something. I know how he feels about Sara. I know that he was eager to give her the results before I had a chance to see them. If anyone else had asked him a favor like that, he would have been hesitant. I trust his judgment completely, which is another thing that adds to my frustration at him. But when Sara asked, he couldn't think of anything else except trying to impress her. He knows exactly how to do that, too. He's got it down to a science.  
  
I remember just looking at Greg and trying to concentrate on the case. Not on my anger at the lab technician, not on my confusion over Sara's actions, just the case. And, along with that, a promise I made to myself a long time ago, when I was much younger and, ironically, much like Greg is now. 


	2. Somewhat Like Greg

Part two is here. Longer and more in-depth than the first. More deserving of having its own chapter. I know the first part was really short, but I couldn't just let this idea go without writing something, and I didn't really have time to work on this until tonight. Part three will probably be up tomorrow, probably. I'm not sure exactly how long this will end up, but there's at least two more parts after this one. Stay tuned :)  
  
---  
  
I'm seeing the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office in my mind now. Funny, the last time I was there was over a decade ago. The last time I worked there must have been two. Almost three. I remember packing up my things for the last time. My emotions that day were so odd that I can recall them perfectly. It was almost like my body was split in two. This half wanted to pack slowly. I was leaving a part of my life behind and moving several hours away from where I had spent a large portion of my life so far. That half couldn't pack fast enough, eager to begin my new job in my new location. It wanted to leave and never look back.  
  
The box I put everything in was eclectically and haphazardly packed, to say the least. Some of the other people at the office commented on it, and that's the main reason why I can remember what it looked like. I know I had several photographs; pictures of my mother and I together, pictures of friends with whom I had largely not kept in touch. I don't bother with photographs anymore. They create clutter and reveal to much about you.  
  
I had knickknacks. Lots and lots of them. The most random things used to hang on the walls and sit on the desks of the workspace I shared with some of the other people in the office. Rainbow Slinkies climbed down the books I had arraigned in a staircase. Scratched 45's hung on the walls by rusty nails and thumbtacks. Scraps of forensic periodicals were scotch taped to the desks. An overflowing binder held crime reports torn from the pages of the LA Times. The only thing done with precision was the placement of the glass boxes holding my perfectly pinned bug specimens. I only had a few near my desk at once. My collection was fairly large even then, and I would show off my most recent acquisitions at the office before putting them alongside the insects and arachnids I kept at home.  
  
I know I would cringe at the sight of my old workspace. I could never work—nor think—in an environment like that now. But I was a much different person twenty-five years ago than I am today. Then, I didn't care about neatness or perfection. I didn't carefully monitor my attention to detail in my work; that was something I felt came naturally to me. I didn't have to put effort into it. My effort was mainly directed at finding common ground with the people I worked with. It was something I had to do. I wasn't a social person—I'm not one now, and I never have been. My colleague closest in age at that point was at least thirteen years my senior. I did not feel taken seriously in the least. The autopsies assigned me were always the most straightforward. If I came up with anything unusual, a more senior coroner would assist in a reexamination. My findings were always considered the least reputable. I knew my work would never be seen as outstanding, not as long as I was alienated from the rest of the lab techs, coroners, and CSI's. So instead of being outstanding, I tried my hand at standing out.  
  
Which explains my unusual belongings at work. I remember bringing in books soon after I took the job. Anything on bugs—lifecycles of insects. The importance of insects in various ecosystems. Insects in forensic studies. That was the gem of my library. I propped them up on the corner of my desk, hoping somebody would notice what I read and ask me about it. Maybe my knowledge would be useful.  
  
When nobody noticed, or, at least, nobody asked me anything, I brought in the wood and glass cases with the delicate specimens inside. These attracted attention with mixed responses. Some of my coworkers avoided my desk from that point on. Others seemed fascinated. My conversations about the bugs lasted, on average, thirty seconds.  
  
So I began to decorate my area with the junk that I thought would give me the right persona to fit in. Anything that might make me stand out enough to attract the attention I wanted and the recognition I craved. At the same time, I began to read the forensic journals left around the place. I did it casually and didn't think much of it. I've always been a bookworm, and to me anything with words that I haven't read must be devoured immediately. And immediately, I was fascinated. I progressed from reading the occasional article to taking home issues meant to be thrown away and clipping articles from them, putting them on walls and desks and elaborate scrapbooks. I began to research the backgrounds on some of the things I read, as well.  
  
Meanwhile, I continued my awkward efforts to gain attention.  
  
I put a latex glove on my head once. Really, I did.  
  
It was a few days before I came across a forensic article that really intrigued me, but I couldn't find any background on. I'm ashamed that I don't remember what it was about. But I went up to one of the crime scene investigators in the unit and asked her about it. She stared at me for just long enough to make me feel uncomfortable, so I looked back at her for a moment, shrugged, and walked off.  
  
I remember the feelings of shame and frustration I had at that moment. I retreated to do an autopsy and work off some of it. Working around places like this is sobering; no matter how bad off you are, there's someone worse off than you, lying under a white sheet with a tag hanging off their toe.  
  
Another autopsy later, and the CSI surprised me by greeting me with a textbook under either arm. She had marked off several pages with information regarding my earlier question. I thought she'd lend me the books for a while, but instead she stayed and spent the better part of an hour going over the information with me. When she was done, and had noted my rapt attention during the impromptu lecture, she looked at me and said, "I didn't know you had it in you to be interested in this kind of thing,"  
  
I did, though. Over the next couple of years, she helped me sate my fascination with forensic science, and told me when openings in crime scene investigation were available in nearby jurisdictions. I declined several before deciding to take an offer in San Francisco. I never did give up that false persona until I left. But at that point, it didn't really matter. I knew that there was something a part of me that pulled me towards where I was headed. And it couldn't be changed or covered up by anything I did or tried to do.  
  
I'm ashamed to say I wasn't strong enough to give up that persona. And that I can't remember the name of that CSI. Like I said, I'm not good at keeping in touch. 


	3. Handiwork

Okay. Here's part three, posted with some hesitation. Here I get into Grissom's background as a Catholic. My worry is that it might be a little too religious. You see, I'm Catholic myself :) So read it and tell me what you think. I'll definitely be back to edit this part later.  
  
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Personality is one thing I've never understood. I always feel like I have to understand everything to be able to control it. Control is something I crave. But I've barely begun to understand how a person's personality works, even after years of trying. Maybe that's why I have such a hard time dealing with people.  
  
So I can't really explain why I am the way I am. The simple truth is that I live and breathe my job. But I do have an idea as to why.  
  
It might have started when I was born. But more probably, it was when I was five and my parents divorced. I didn't understand what was going on, I was too young. But I did become closer to my mother very quickly. I remember her telling me stories of her childhood. She grew up in a very devout Catholic family. She and I would stay up late on hot summer nights when I couldn't sleep due to the heat, and she'd spend hours telling me tales of picnics at her church and family outings with precise, intricate description and detail.  
  
My mother lost her hearing when I was nine. I cried for a long time when she explained this to me. I wasn't so worried about her as I was about the stories we shared. But I quickly learned how beautifully descriptive sign language can be, and how beautiful my mother's hands were.  
  
When my mother became deaf, she began to turn again to her childhood religion. I remember the small hardbound bible she kept by the bed, and the soft onionskin pages that she flipped through so carefully. She began to tell me the stories she read in the bible, and I watched as her hands made the shapes of the Great Flood, the Nativity, the Easter Story… all her favorites. She tried to teach me about Eternal Life. Ironically, that's when I became so fascinated with death.  
  
Death became something that I had to understand. It scared me, actually. In my short life I had already been faced with a lot of unchangeable, life altering experiences. And that made death seem so much more real.  
  
I began to take my bike out early in the morning so that my mother wouldn't know. I went down to the beach and collected the carcasses of anything I could find. Reptilian, mammalian, whatever was there that day. I took them home and hid them in a shack behind my house. My mother never went there and it was easy to conceal both the bodies and the smell.  
  
I'd stay there for hours examining the animals' remains. At first I'd prod them with a stick; I progressed to examining them with my bare hands. I'd stare into their lifeless eyes and wonder. What was the difference between them and me?  
  
My mother found us a church to attend. She took me with her every Sunday to the ten o'clock mass. The other children my age would be led away to Sunday school near the beginning of it, but I begged my mother to be allowed to stay with her. I held her hand as we sat and watcher her with awe. She couldn't hear a word of the readings or the homily, yet her eyes shone with radiance as she sat in rapt attention. This perplexed me, and after several Sundays I decided that there could only be one reason she was so happy—even though it was slightly against my analytical mind, the Bible must have truth to it. So I began to eagerly wait for the Bible stories she'd tell me and listen patiently to the Priest at every Mass. And, when my mother gave me my own Children's Bible, I read it every day.  
  
We sang a hymn one Sunday which had words I didn't fully comprehend. My mother seemed to be familiar with the song. She had signed along to parts of it as she bobbed her head slightly with the rhythm. After Mass, I asked her about what it meant. She opened her Bible and had me read a passage. Matthew 28:19-20.  
  
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.  
  
I didn't understand this, either, but I didn't say anything. I didn't want to disappoint her.  
  
Some time later though, I approached her. I remember tugging on her sleeve to get her attention while she was reading. She was always reading, and I know that's why I always have a book on hand now.  
  
She looked at me and I told her that I had been thinking about the verse from Matthew she showed me. She smiled. I asked her if I was right in thinking that we were supposed to tell other people what we believed. She told me yes and was surprised when I responded with, "How are we supposed to help the dead people?"  
  
She explained to me again that by the time people died, their destiny was already decided. The good people went to heaven, she said, and the bad people were lost. They went to hell. She stressed that word as a warning, then told me that it was our job to make sure that people were good and would go to heaven.  
  
Her bluntness unnerved me somewhat. But it made me think. Something about what she told me didn't seem right. It didn't seem fair. And so I pondered over it late into the night as I became more and more enthralled by the autopsies I did on the wild animals that I found, salt-encrusted, on the beaches.  
  
While I pieced together the puzzle, discovering the causes of death for the various animals, I worked on another, more theological puzzle in my head. In my mind, the dead weren't gone. They were just silent.  
  
There are two human fears greater and more common than any others: spiders and death. I suppose I'm not the one to be speaking about fears. But from an early age there was something I understood. Death is brushed aside as finality because we don't understand it. Humans need to see where something begins and ends to understand it fully. All books have a definite beginning and a definite end. But lives don't. Circumstances help develop our character and life far before we are born, and they continue to affect us far after we're gone.  
  
I began to believe this more and more fully as I progressed from autopsying beach carrion to becoming an intern of the state. Continuously I'd try to mesh my beliefs with the religion my mother ingrained in my life so deeply. Silently, I amended the Great Commission ordained by God: spread the Word to the living, but vindicate the actions of the dead.  
  
Then came college. To some extent I became alienated during these four short years. I've never been the kind to make friends, and my course load kept me busy enough that I felt no need to maintain more than causal acquaintances during that time. The distance from home was great enough that I grew farther apart from my mother. I lost touch with so much of myself that she had helped nurture. Most notably, my religion… 


	4. Imperfect Sleep

Finished the last part. It's not very long, but it does justice… I hope, anyway. Enjoy! I hope the ending is satisfactory.  
  
---  
  
I must have dozed off somehow, because I'm definitely asleep… at least, this seems like a dream because I'm in my office, yet it doesn't quite feel… like my office. I'm sitting in my chair and not four feet away is Sara. She's humming a song that I'm positive she doesn't know. She can't know it, yet she's staring me in the eye and singing—not humming, like she does every now and then. She's singing. I muse that I've never heard her sing before, and that her voice is clear and beautiful, before I pay attention to the words. "God has sent the Great Commission, heal the sick and feed the poor." I stare at her for a moment and try to talk to her.  
  
"Sara. You know when I first told you that we're the victim's last voice?"  
  
She stares at me, unblinking. "Lest the church abandon its mission, and the Gospel go unheard," she finishes, tapering off into a soft, melodious hum. I falter, unsure of what I was going to say to her. I begin again.  
  
"I don't think death is how most people perceive it. I think that most people make it out to be something… final, sinister, unwanted. And it is, to some extent. But it's not the end of life the way most people consider it to be. It's just…"  
  
I realize that I wasn't making any sense.  
  
"Death is the end of us, our life, the way we're living it. But that doesn't mean we don't keep on living. In a way. The people that come after us, that aspire to do the same things we're doing, that try to fix our mistakes, we keep living. Through them."  
  
I pause and realize that I had broken my gaze from Sara and am now concentrating instead on the papers on my desk sitting in a disheveled pile. Looking back at her, I realize that my voice has quieted to a whisper.  
  
"So when I said we were the last voice of the victim, we are, but we're not the last life of that person. And part of our job is to… set that person straight, find out what happened to them. So that their life ends as, as—positively as possible."  
  
Sara looks at me blankly.  
  
"Sometimes I wonder why we work the cases we do. Is it chance, or is there such a thing as fate? Most of the time, I can't let myself, a scientist, believe in something so… but every now and then, things seem like that have a reason… sometimes I just don't know what I believe…" I trail off.  
  
"Will you remember that?" I ask her tentatively.  
  
Her stare doesn't waver as she responds, "You aren't my teacher anymore, you know." I didn't know that you could be taken aback in a dream. She must realize that I was startled by her response, because she shifts her body and softens her facial expression until she looks more relaxed and natural.  
  
Reassured by this, I ask her, "If I promise to learn from you, will you learn from me?"  
  
She laughs. Her laugh is as wonderful and completely enveloping as it is in real life, the few times I've heard it. "You already do. Nine dots on a piece of paper…"  
  
I can't help but smile at this. "I think…"  
  
But I don't know what I'm thinking, because the alarm clock is alerting me that it's four in the afternoon. Groggily, I sit up in bed for a minute, listening until I recognize the song. But I panic as I realize that I'm not simply listening to the music, I'm grappling at it, attempting to gain a full hold and recognize a word or syllable as it fades away, crumbling down like loose rock.  
  
Moments later, things seem to have returned to normal, and I only need a few bars of the song to recognize it—Sounds of Silence. What a coincidence—or is it fate?  
  
I groan at myself, realizing how dangerous it is for me to allow myself to think like this. But I don't have too much time to continue my train of thought as I prepare for work. Driving towards the crime lab, I hum contently with the radio without any thoughts of my recent dialogue with myself.  
  
Walking down the hall towards the break room, I nod to people as I pass them in the hall. Pushing the door in front of me, I'm not surprised to be the first to arrive. Except for Sara, I notice as I enter the room—she's curled up with a magazine in the corner of the sofa, hidden from view at first. I start to great her, but pause at the doorway before any words escape me. She's humming, softly humming a song I could swear she wouldn't know. A song that I could swear that I haven't heard myself in a long, long time. 


End file.
